This is an online log of my Slackware experiences. Be aware that I'm also using this blog to cover basic and intermediate security issues that may not pertain to Slackware. This is my way of consolidating blogs (I've several of them).

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Saturday, February 17, 2007

Yeah, I had to do some archiving of the logs, as diskspace usage was at 96%. I didn't just archive the channel logs, but also archived my snort and web logs. About the only thing I haven't archived yet are the modsecurity logs (will do that sometime this weekend). Currently, the host's drive space is currently at 74%. The channel logs are still in place, but I've crunched the logs into monthly tar.bz2 files. This renders the logs unsearchable by google (yeah, this sucks), but I had to compromise...they are still downloadable, just not searchable. So, if you need them, they are there for download. Once you download them, you can grep each tar.bz2 after uncompressing them. Hopefully, Google still has the logs cached so that a person searching for an item can still see the cached files. Maybe I'll purchase more drive space so that I can host the logs in an untarred and uncompressed format in the near future.

Speaking of the channel, there has again been some ruckus about someone being banned 'unduly'. People have to recognize that moderating a channel does come at a price. One of these prices is the fact that people can't visit their frustrations on the channel. An individual visited the channel highly upset that Pat froze Slackware-current relating to issues with both the 2.4 and 2.6 kernel. Instead of following advice to follow up with Pat, he continues to vent on the channel, causing a rather heated flame war over something trivial. He was +q'd (meaning his speech was removed), but he evaded +q. He was then "removed" (meaning he was booted, not kicked, from the channel), but came back in the channel with the same attitude. He was then banned for 30 days. Anyone who evades moderation will automatically get a ban. Why 30 and not 7 days? Because, behind the scenes, in private message, the individual was very argumentive and I didn't feel like dealing with him 2 days later for the same offense. After reading the logs, someone had the gall to mention in the channel that the ban was unwarranted...this person thought that the individual was banned because of his views...WRONG. Read the channel guidelines. It states specifically that any +q/ban evasion will be dealt with in a rather harsh manner. Many people do not realize that the ops will never be able to please every single person's views in the channel. I've been doing this a LONG time (4+ years) and no matter if I just sit there and let the channel run itself or if I step in and boot someone, someone ALWAYS complains. It's a no-brainer for me: moderation is what it is. You can take it or leave it. There aren't too many channels on Freenode that aren't moderated. By nature, moderation pretty much means you can't state everything you feel, especially when it ruins the continuity of the channel chat. Is this an oxymoron, especially since Freenode is inhabited mostly by coders and free-thinkers? Every discussion, whether its in real-life in a conference or in someone's home or online on a forum or in a chat room/channel, will have some type of moderation. So, going forward, I'll not be including comments to the ban messages, as this adds confusion to why the person was banned. Really, the channel doesn't need to know why said person was banned after the fact. The ban messages are for the person being banned and it was designed that way by the people who set up the IRC specifications. If you want to know why someone was banned, speak with them directly or read the logs. I've no time to hold some lengthly dialog with someone who thinks that everyone should join an IRC channel and unload their frustrations. I try to think as objectively as possible on anything that goes on in the channel and to be quite honest, there's been a ton of bitching about the ops lately. When I see the non-ops quit pushing the ops' buttons, I'll take them more seriously and get more active in seeing to their needs...but the bellyaching has to stop first. Seriously, its usually the same people bitching about their rights being violated, and if its not the same people, there's usually some association.